The “Bina: A Better Together Podcast,” created by the students and staff of Contra Costa Midrasha and sponsored by J., brings together Jewish teens and elders to ask questions, share stories and learn from one another.
In the latest episode, Yarden Crane, 17, and Aviva Feder, 16, interviewed Michael Tejeda, 81, about his journey from growing up Catholic to becoming president of Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek.
“I was a serious Catholic till I was 20, and then all of a sudden I just lost interest,” he said in the episode released June 15. “I didn’t become an atheist. I didn’t become a revolutionary, none of that stuff. I didn’t get an Eastern religion. I just kind of became very neutral about things.”
But after he married a Jewish woman, he began to gain familiarity with her religion and ultimately ended up converting.
“I’ve been an official Jew for 30 years,” Tejeda told the teens.
For Tejeda, the core of his involvement in the Jewish community is in lending a helping hand at his congregation.
“There’s no outside support. Synagogues just stand on their own,” he said. “I realized that to build things, people have to do it.”
Tejeda also offered some advice for the teens, who were born more than six decades after him.
“Old people aren’t a separate category,” he told them. “They’re just what you’re gonna be in X number of years. It’s just ‘you’ as an adult. We all remember our teenage years.”